New Testingstan

where's alyrium

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 ... er-watches

man edi is still touting terrible games

ps how is it even POSSIBLE to make such an ugly game these days

Zod wrote:there's any number of factors that would cause supposed "lost sales"

negative reviews

developers being assholes and alienating their audience

renting a movie and deciding it's not worth buying

so i don't believe the lost sale argument is actually worth a whole lot

Yeah. I mean, do they lose sales from piracy? Probably, in the theoretical sense that, if there was no piracy (through magic or whatever) then some of the people who might have pirated would end up paying for it anyway because they had no other choice. I mean, as I said above, if you pirate something you pretty obviously wanted it in the first place, otherwise there's no point.

But in reality it's a lot more fuzzy. I mean, all of those things you mentioned above could influence someone to not buy something. How do you know which factor was most important? Some maybe less so: I mean if you legit rent a movie and decide it wasn't worth buying, you probably didn't enjoy it all that much so why take the time to download a copy to sit on your hard drive? If you thought it good enough to possess a permanent copy of it, why not buy it?

Same with negative reviews and asshole developers. If those turn you off of buying it, you shouldn't be looking to have a copy of it anyway, right? TBH the people who go ahead and pirate anyway and then bring out those reasons just comes across as justifications after the fact for "I wanted it for free".

Man, maybe I'm just jaded by the attitude I get from some of the 'pro-piracy' crowd that their mantra is basically "Everything should be free!" when the world doesn't work like that. I mean, to go back to my earlier example, if there was a way to swipe a big screen TV that was reasonably easy and risk free instead of buying, no shit there will be a certain subset of people who would choose that every time and never buy one. Does this make it inherently right or legal?

I recognize, of course, this is a complex issue and all that. And, FWIW, I don't really agree with some of the existing law, mostly with the absurdly long time limits. On the other hand, I can't exactly bring myself to be on the side of piracy, either.

RogueIce wrote: But in reality it's a lot more fuzzy. I mean, all of those things you mentioned above could influence someone to not buy something. How do you know which factor was most important? Some maybe less so: I mean if you legit rent a movie and decide it wasn't worth buying, you probably didn't enjoy it all that much so why take the time to download a copy to sit on your hard drive? If you thought it good enough to possess a permanent copy of it, why not buy it?

Same with negative reviews and asshole developers. If those turn you off of buying it, you shouldn't be looking to have a copy of it anyway, right? TBH the people who go ahead and pirate anyway and then bring out those reasons just comes across as justifications after the fact for "I wanted it for free".

Man, maybe I'm just jaded by the attitude I get from some of the 'pro-piracy' crowd that their mantra is basically "Everything should be free!" when the world doesn't work like that. I mean, to go back to my earlier example, if there was a way to swipe a big screen TV that was reasonably easy and risk free instead of buying, no shit there will be a certain subset of people who would choose that every time and never buy one. Does this make it inherently right or legal?

I recognize, of course, this is a complex issue and all that. And, FWIW, I don't really agree with some of the existing law, mostly with the absurdly long time limits. On the other hand, I can't exactly bring myself to be on the side of piracy, either.

the anti-piracy crowd seems to like the argument that people are perfectly spherical robits who will go and buy whatever's cheapest

instead of going out to buy from whoever's marketing line they like the best

the media industry just doesn't like compedition

qed

Yeah. Like I said, I mostly get a dislike for the "everything should be free" crowd who seem to think owning a luxury item like Modern Warfare 3 is some God-given human right they should have and fuck paying for it.

Does the industry bring some of it on themselves? Absolutely, with bullshit malware DRM, the music rights for TV shows crap, etc. In those cases yes, I can see why you'd want a pirated version.

Take that sort of thing out of the equation though, and TBH I don't see a lot of justifications for piracy other than "lol free".

nobody likes competition

except the consumer

RogueIce wrote:Yeah. Like I said, I mostly get a dislike for the "everything should be free" crowd who seem to think owning a luxury item like Modern Warfare 3 is some God-given human right they should have and fuck paying for it.

naw they mostly say "culture/information should be free". stupid things like food and clothes and houses should cost money

but games and movies should be free to share

free for everyone that can afford a computer that is

and a broadband connection

things not exactly available to the chinese slave children producing their computers and phones working 14 hours a day locked in factories watched by armed guards. what the fuck do they want to do about that?

"pirate partyism" - just another ideology for the strange interests of the middle class???


i think you're right that their whole "revise copyrights, end patents" ideas are post hoc from their file sharing experiences, when they realised the music industry had interests that went against theirs, and started to oppose the means they use to exercise their power

but patents are so massively profitable to corporations so i don't know how naïve they are to think they just won't bring them back once people start losing interest and haphazardly vote some industry friendly person into office

maybe they really think the people control the state and their laws are eternal

One anti-piracy argument that I've always found hilarious is the music industry's "if you pirate this album, you are robbing the artist of monies that were theirs".

As a musician, I like to run with this logic and posit that anyone who doesn't buy my album is robbing me.

PublicKnowledge.org wrote:“We suggest that in the meantime, if the MPAA is truly concerned about the jobs of truck drivers and others in the industry, then it can bring its overseas filming back to the U.S. and create more jobs."

I gotta admit, I think this is one of the best one-liners on the whole SOPA/PIPA thing I've yet seen.

RogueIce wrote:I mean, as I said above, if you pirate something you pretty obviously wanted it in the first place, otherwise there's no point.

It's generally obvious when an American is talking about piracy and they go "why don't you buy this derp". Increasingly there are laws preventing parallel importing and in fact was a part of ACTA which aim to make it illegal in the countries who signed on.

That's even if it is for sale. Technically, it is copyright infringement to download a TV episode for a show which only ever airs in the USA but never gets a DVD release nor is broadcast anywhere else in the world.

A good example is really popular TV shows & Australia. People around the world is talking about the latest great ep for some series, but without being blessed by the studio who was exclusive rights and a rather large number of companies inbetween, there is no way for an Australian to participate in this cultural event surrounding the show as episodes are released. That the DVD release is over 6 months away(in the USA, years in Australia), and the local TV station is broadcasting episodes from 3 years ago as "new", really don't fucking matter when people you associate online are talking about the latest episode.

Zod wrote:where's alyrium

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 ... er-watches

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 2&t=153295

Because fuck those guys.

weemadando wrote:

Zod wrote:where's alyrium

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 ... er-watches

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 2&t=153295

Because fuck those guys.

maybe terralthra should fuck off and play mod elsewhere (of course it won't be called that if it's a popular sentiment)

xon wrote:

RogueIce wrote:I mean, as I said above, if you pirate something you pretty obviously wanted it in the first place, otherwise there's no point.

It's generally obvious when an American is talking about piracy and they go "why don't you buy this derp". Increasingly there are laws preventing parallel importing and in fact was a part of ACTA which aim to make it illegal in the countries who signed on.

That's even if it is for sale. Technically, it is copyright infringement to download a TV episode for a show which only ever airs in the USA but never gets a DVD release nor is broadcast anywhere else in the world.

A good example is really popular TV shows & Australia. People around the world is talking about the latest great ep for some series, but without being blessed by the studio who was exclusive rights and a rather large number of companies inbetween, there is no way for an Australian to participate in this cultural event surrounding the show as episodes are released. That the DVD release is over 6 months away(in the USA, years in Australia), and the local TV station is broadcasting episodes from 3 years ago as "new", really don't fucking matter when people you associate online are talking about the latest episode.

A blog of mine from 2007 says pretty much the same thing. I really wish more had changed in the past 4 or 5 years, but the fucking region locking, ip gating and all that remains just as prevalent as ever and now there's so much device specific content - oh you can't watch that stuff, you've got a Sony, not a Samsung TV or oh you can't watch that you're on Playstation not XBox. All of this is still happening even with organisations who in theory, control their own broadcast rights etc.

I mean, who would have thought that content producers wouldn't want people to have more opportunities to give them money

the idea of controlling a 'format' is really appealing from a strategic perspective

and none of the decisionmakers probably care its not feasible in reality

ps ando you got told off by dark hellion

i rate that

xon wrote:It's generally obvious when an American is talking about piracy and they go "why don't you buy this derp". Increasingly there are laws preventing parallel importing and in fact was a part of ACTA which aim to make it illegal in the countries who signed on.

That's even if it is for sale. Technically, it is copyright infringement to download a TV episode for a show which only ever airs in the USA but never gets a DVD release nor is broadcast anywhere else in the world.

A good example is really popular TV shows & Australia. People around the world is talking about the latest great ep for some series, but without being blessed by the studio who was exclusive rights and a rather large number of companies inbetween, there is no way for an Australian to participate in this cultural event surrounding the show as episodes are released. That the DVD release is over 6 months away(in the USA, years in Australia), and the local TV station is broadcasting episodes from 3 years ago as "new", really don't fucking matter when people you associate online are talking about the latest episode.

I thought about this when reading a PR fanboard's qqing over MegaUpload getting shut down and "oh noes my tokus!" was their reaction.

And my response was: meh

I'm sure there are many quality programs produced outside the US that I will never see because they don't make their way over here as well. And unless I missed some international treaty or UN declaration that all entertainment media produced in one nation must, by law, be made available to all other nations on the planet...well, I don't buy this as a justification to piracy either.

Sucks you can't see popular shows from the US (or wherever) and get left out of certain online discussions. Pretty sure if I hung out on boards heavily frequented by Aussie TV watchers I'd be in the same boat. Still doesn't make the piracy legal, and TBH I don't see a good reason why they should. If they don't want to distribute in a timely manner (or at all) to a certain country or region or whatever, that's their business.

weemadando wrote:I really wish more had changed in the past 4 or 5 years, but the fucking region locking, ip gating and all that remains just as prevalent as ever and now there's so much device specific content - oh you can't watch that stuff, you've got a Sony, not a Samsung TV or oh you can't watch that you're on Playstation not XBox.

See, this is valid for reasons why people would pirate and IMO they'd be better off getting rid of that to reduce the incentive. I mean, I dunno if there was ever some kind of technical reason for region locking (aside from "buy local foos") and TBH that alone would help things, I'd think. And "must watch on certain brand of TV even if it's fully available in your local store" is pretty BS.

Dunno about IP gating, but eh. Still falls under "if they want to limit their viewership like that, up to them" theory for me, though.

And if Amazon US doesn't want to ship to Aussieland and Amazon Australia (do they have one?) doesn't carry it well, sucks I guess but that was their business choice, wasn't it?

In the end, people in Australia don't have a "right" to view US shows any more than people in the US have a "right" to view Australian shows. Would it be nice if they were better about global distribution? Certainly. Does it somehow justify piracy? Not really.

region locking exists solely to enforce regional licencing/distribution deals

from such a perspective you could see it as an expectation that the market would continue to sell licences to regional distributors, rather than the global distributor networks that exist

Who the fuck is SLAcker a reincarnation of?

Hey ando, read the blogpost. Is this what you meant by IP gating?

What really brought this about though was a much simpler problem - a discussion on the new Batman costume. Apparently Empire Online had a story with pictures of the new outfit, which was being discussed on Stardestroyer.net. But I couldn't find the story, even when clicking on a link posted by other users. Nor could the other Australians on the site. Why? Because it was redirecting to the .com.au site, which doesn't have that story on it, and attempts to go direct to the US site were foiled by auto-redirects. Not wanting to waste time circumventing this, I just gave up.

I agree, that's pretty dumb. I wonder if there's a technical reason for it somehow (doubtful, but maybe adr knows) or just "we want US only" for...some reason.

I mean, maybe I get it for streaming TV shows and stuff. But a simple article? That seems excessive.

Hey everyone, remember that time an act of parliament made region locking illegal in Australia?

If we want money but are still too chickenshit to tax the mining industry, we just need to finally start applying all those penalties for the past 6 years....

yeah dude then we signed the fta and lost all right to regulate ip in our own country

RogueIce wrote:In the end, people in Australia don't have a "right" to view US shows any more than people in the US have a "right" to view Australian shows.

Australian TV shows often air in the USA before they air in Australia.

Would it be nice if they were better about global distribution? Certainly. Does it somehow justify piracy? Not really.

Of course it does. The market demand is for the product on the actual release date, not some arbitary value several years down the track. If the suppliers don't fulfill that demand, customers will go elsewhere. It just happens that the elsewhere happens to be a zero-day release because the alternative is still years down the track.

RogueIce wrote:Hey ando, read the blogpost. Is this what you meant by IP gating?

It means if you have an Australian IP you don't get to play, or get redirected to an utterly worthless "australian" version of the site which doesn't actually have the same content.

starku wrote:yeah dude then we signed the fta and lost all right to regulate ip in our own country

And it completely unsuprising news, large parts of the USA parts of the fta haven't yet been implemented in the USA.

Alyeska is a humorless dick. More as it comes in.

Moved and locked.

Yeah, he forgot to lock it. SLacker is a dumb motherfucker too. "LOL MOD DID SOMETHING THEREFORE IT IS CORRECT!!!!!"